No More Learning

THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
state of need may be condition of existence, in asmuch as reduces an individual to that modicum of means which, though keeps him together, does not allow him to squander his strength--The in dividual himself the struggle of parts nourishment, space, etc. ) his development involves the triumph, the predominance, of isolated parts; the wasting away, or the "development into organs," of other parts.
The influence of "environment" nonsensically overrated in Darwin: the essential factor in the process of life precisely the tremendous inner
power
127
? to shape and to create forms, which merely uses, exploits "environment. "
The new forms built up by this inner power are not produced with view to any end; but, in the struggle between the parts, new form does not exist long without becoming related to some kind of semi-utility, and, according to its use, develops itself ever more and more perfectly.
648.
" Utility " in respect of the acceleration of the speed of evolution, different kind of " utility " from that which understood to mean the greatest possible stability and staying power of the evolved
creature.
649.
"Useful" in the sense of Darwinian biology means: that which favours thing in its struggle with others. But in my opinion the feeling of
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128 THE WILL TO POWER.
being surcharged, the feeling accompanying an increase in strength, quite apart from the utility of the struggle, is the actual progress: from these feelings the will to war is first derived.
650.
Physiologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength: " self-preservation " is only one of the results thereof. --Let us beware of superfluous teleological principles l--one of'which is the whole concept of " self-preservation. "
65 I.
The most fundamental and most primeval activ ity of a protoplasm cannot be ascribed to a will to self-preservation, for it absorbs an amount of material which is absurdly out of proportion with the needs of its preservation: and what is more, it does not "preserve itself" in the process, but actually falls to pieces. . . . The instinct which rules here, must account for this total absence in the organism of a desire to preserve itself: "hunger" is already an interpretation based upon the observation of a more or less complex organ ism (hunger is a specialised and later form of the instinct; it is an expression of the system of divided labour, in the service of a higher instinct which rules the whole).
* See Beyond Good and Evil, in this edition, Aph. 13.
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652.
just as impossible to regard hunger as the primum mobile, as to take self-preservation to
be so. Hunger, cOnsidered as the result of in sufficient nourishment, means hunger as the result of will to power which can no longer dominate.
It not a question of replacing loss,---it only later on, as the result of the division of labour, when the Will to Power has discovered other and quite different ways of gratifying itself, that the appropriating lust of the organism reduced to hunger--to the need of replacing what has been
lost.
653.
We can but laugh at the false "Altruism" of biologists: propagation among the amoebae ap
pears as process of jetsam, as an advantage to them. It an excretion of useless matter.
654.
The division of a protoplasm into two takes place when its power no longer suflicient to
subjugate the matter has appropriated: pro creation the result of impotence.
In the cases in which'the males seek the females and become one with them, procreation the re sult of hunger.
655.
The weaker vessel driven to the stronger from need of nourishment; desires to get under
VOL. II.
THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
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THE WILL TO POWER.
if possible to become one with it. The stronger, on the contrary, defends itself from others ; it refuses to perish in this way; it prefers rather to split itself into two or more parts in the process of growing. One may conclude that the greater the urgency seems to become one with something else, the more weakness in some form is present. The greater the tendency to variety, difference, inner decay, the more strength is actually to hand.
The instinct to cleave to something, and the instinct to repel something, are in the inorganic as in the organic world, the uniting bond. The whole distinction is a piece of hasty judgment.
The will to power in every combination of forces, defending itself against the stronger and coming down unmercifully upon the weaker, is more correct.
N. B. --Allprocesses may be regarded as " beings. "
656.
The will to power can manifest itself only
against obstacles; it therefore goes in search of what resists it--this is the primitive tendency of the protoplasm when it extends its pseudopodia and feels about it. The act of appropriation and assimilation above all, the result of desire to overpower, process of forming, of additional building and rebuilding, until at last the subjected creature has become completely part of the superior creature's sphere of power, and has in creased the latter. --If this process of incorporation
does not succeed, then the whole organism falls to
? ? and the separation occurs as the result of the will to power: in order to prevent the escape of that
pieces
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which has been subjected, the will to power falls into two wills (under some circumstances without even abandoning completely its relation to the two).
"Hunger" is only a more narrow adaptation, once the fundamental instinct of power has won power of a more abstract kind.
my
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let 657.
THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
13!
What is "passive"? To be hindered in the outward movement of grasping: it is thus an
What is " active "? .
act of resistance and
reaction.
To stretch out for power.
Is only a derived pheno menon; the primitive form of it was the will to stuff everything in
side one's own skin. Only derived; originally, in those cases in which one will was unable to organise the collective
mass it had appropri ated, an opposing will
came into power, which undertook to effect the separation and estab
lish a new centre of organisation, after a struggle with the ori ginal will.
" Nutrition " .
. .
? Procreation " . .
? ? 132 "Pleasure"
THE WILL TO POWER.
. . . Is a feeling of power (presupposing the ex
istence of pain).
658.
? (I) The organic functions shown to be but forms of the fundamental will, the will to power,--and buds thereof.
The will to power specialises itself as will to nutrition, to property, to tools, to servants (obedi ence), and to rulers: the body as an example. -- The stronger will directs the weaker. There is no other form of causality than that of will to will.
It is not to be explained mechanically.
(2)
? Thinking, feeling, willing, in all living organ isms. What is a desire if it be not: a provoca tion of the feeling of power by an obstacle (or, better still, by rhythmical obstacles and resisting
--so that it surges through it? Thus in all plea sure pain is understood--If the pleasure is to be very great, the pains preceding it must have been very long, and the whole bow of life must have been strained to the utmost.
(3)
forces)
The will to shaping,
With the body as clue--Granting that the "soul"
Intellectual functions. forming, and making like, etc.
Man.
659.
(4)
was only an attractive and
mysterious thought,
? ? '(b)
>Wel'
from which philosophers rightly, but reluctantly, separated themselves--that which they have since learnt to put in its place perhaps even more attractive and even more mysterious. The human body, in which the whole of the most distant and most recent past of all organic life once more
nd
this past and right over like huge and inaud ible torrent the body more wonderful thought than the old " soul. " In all ages the body, as our actual property, as our most certain being, in short, as our ego, has been more earnestly believed in than the spirit (or the "soul," or the subject, as the school jargon now calls it). has never occurred to any one to regard his stomach as strange or divine stomach; but that there tendency and predilection in man to regard all his thoughts as "inspired," all his values as " im parted to him by God," all his instincts as dawning activities--this proved by the evidence of every age in man's history. Even now, especi ally among artists, there may very often be noticed
sort of wonder, and deferential hesitation to decide, when the question occurs to them, by what means they achieved their happiest work, and from which world the creative thought came down to them: when they question in this way, they are possessed by feeling of guilelessness and childish shyness. They dare not say: " That came from me; was my hand which threw that die. " Conversely, even those philosophers and theolo
gians, who in their logic and piety found the most imperative reasons for regarding their body as
THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE. ,133
? ms becomes living and corporal, seems to flow through
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deception (and even as a deception overcome and disposed of), could not help recognising the foolish fact that the body still remained: and the most unexpected proofs of this are to be found partly in Pauline and partly in Vedantic philosophy. But what does strength of faith ultimately mean? Nothing l--A strong faith might also be a foolish faith l--There is food for reflection.
And supposing the faith in the body were ulti mately but the result of a conclusion; supposing it were a false conclusion, as idealists declare it would not then involve some doubt concerning the trustworthiness of the spirit itself whiqh thus
causes us to draw wrong conclusions?
Supposing the plurality of things, and space,
and time, and motion (and whatever the other first principles of belief in the body may be) were errors--what suspicions would not then be roused against the spirit which led us to form such first principles? Let suffice that the belief in the body at any rate for the present, a much stronger belief than the belief in the spirit, and he who would fain undermine assails the authority
of the spirit most thoroughly in so doing!
660.
The Body as an Empire.
The aristocracy in the body, the majority of the rulers (the fight between the cells and the tissues). Slavery and the division of labour: the higher type alone possible through the subjection of the
lower to function.
134
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THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
Pleasure and pain, not contraries. The feeling
"Procreation ": this is the decay which' super venes when the ruling cells are too weak to organ ise appropriated material.
It is the moulding force which will have a con tinual supply of new material (more " force The masterly construction of an organism out of an egg.
" The mechanical interpretation ": recognises only quantities: but the real energy in the quality. Mechanics can therefore only describe processes; cannot explain them.
" Purpose. " We should start out from the " sagacity" of plants.
The concept of " meliorism ": not only greater complexity, but greater power need not be only
greater masses).
Conclusion concerning the evolution of man:
the road to perfection lies in the bringing forth of the most powerful individuals, for whose use the great masses would be converted into mere tools
r35
? of power. " " Nutrition
only a result of the insatiable lust of appropriation in the Will to Power.
? to say, into the most intelligent and flex ible tools possible).
661.
Why all activity, even that of sense, associ ated with pleasure? Because, before the activity was possible, an obstacle or a burden was done away with. Or, rather, because all action process of overcoming, of becoming master of, and of increasing the feeling ofpawer ? --The pleasure
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I 36 THE WILL To POWER.
of thought--Ultimately it is not only the feeling of power, but also the pleasure of creating and of contemplating the creation: for all activity enters our consciousness in the form of " works. "
662.
Creating is an act of selecting and of finishing the thing selected. (In every act of the will, this
is the essential
All phenomena which are the result of intentions may be reduced to the intention Qf increasing power.
664.
When we do anything, we are conscious of a feeling qf strength; we often have this sensation before the act--that is to say, while imagining the thing to do (as, for instance, at the sight of an enemy, of an obstacle, which we feel equal to): it
is always an accompanying sensation. Instinc tively we think that this feeling of strength is the cause of the action, that it is the " motive force. " Our belief in causation is the belief in force and its effect; it is a transcript of our experience: in which we identify force and the feeling of force. -- Force, however, never moves things; the strength which is conscious " does not set the muscles mov ing. " "Of such a process we have no experience, no idea. " "We experience as little concerning
? element. )
663.
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
I37
force as a motive power, as concerning the necessity of a movement. " Force is said to be the con straining element! " All we know is that one thing follows another ;---we know nothing of either compulsion or arbitrariness in regard to the one following the other. " Causality is first in
vented by thinking compulsion into the sequence of processes. A certain "understanding" of the thing is the result--that is to_say, we humanise the process a little, we make it more "familiar"; the familiar is the known habitual fact of human compulsion associated with the feeling offorce.
665.
I have the intention of extending my arm; taking it for granted that I know as little of the physiology of the human body and of the mechani cal laws of its movements as the man in the street, what could there be more vague, more bloodless, more uncertain than this intention compared with what follows it? And supposing I were the astutest of mechanics, and especially conversant with the formula: which are applicable in this case,
I should not be able to extend my arm one whit the better. Our "knowledge " and our " action " in this case lie coldly apart: as though in two different regions--Again: Napoleon carries out a" plan of campaign--what does that mean ? In this case, everything concerning the consummation of the campaign is known, because everything must be done through words of command: but even here subordinates are taken for granted, who apply
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and adapt the general plan to the particular emer gency, to the degree of strength, etc.
666.
For ages we have always ascribed the value of an action, of a character, of an existence, to the intention, to the purpose for which it was done, acted, or lived: this primeval idiosyncrasy of taste
> ultimately takes a dangerous turn--provided the lack of intention and purpose in all phenomena comes ever more to the front in consciousness. With it a general depreciation of all values seems to be preparing: "All is without sense. "--This melancholy phrase means: " All sense lies in the intention, and if the intention is absolutely lacking, then sense must be lacking too.
" In conformity with this valuation, people were forced to place the
value of life in a " life after death," or in the pro gressive development of ideas, or of mankind, or of the people, or of man to superman; but in this way the progressus in infinitum of purpose had been reached: it was ultimately necessary to find
one's self a place in the process of the world (perhaps with the disdaemonistic outlook, it was a process which led to nonentity). "
In regard to this point, "purpose needs a some what more severe criticism: it ought to be recog
nised that an action is never caused by a purpose ; that an object and the means thereto are inter pretations, by means of which certain points in a phenomena are selected and accentuated, at the cost of other, more numerous, points; that every
138
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I39
time something done for
fundamentally different, and yet other things happen that in regard to the action done with purpose, the case the same as with the so-called purposefulness of the heat which radiated from the sun: the greater part of the total sum squan dered; portion of which scarcely worth reckoning, has "purpose," has "sense"; that an " end " with its "means" an absurdly in
definite description, which indeed may be able to command as precept, as " will," but presupposes
system of obedient and trained instruments, which, in the place of the indefinite, puts forward
host of determined entities (ie. we imagine system of clever but narrow intellects who postu late end and means, in order to be able to grant our only known " end," the re? le of the "cause of an action,"--a proceeding to which we have no right: tantamount to solving problem by placing its solution in an inaccessible world which
we cannot observe).
Finally, why could not an "end" be merely an
accompanying feature in the series of changes among the active forces which bring about the
action--a pale stenographic symbol stretched in consciousness beforehand, and which serves as guide to what happens, even as symbol of what happens, not as its cause ? --But in this way we criticise will itself: not an illusion to regard that which enters consciousness as will-power. as
cause? Are not all conscious phenomena only final phenomena--the lost links in chain, but apparently conditioning one another in their
purpose, something
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THE WILL TO POWER.
sequence within the plane of consciousness? This might be an illusion.
667.
Science does not inquire what impels us to will: on the contrary, it denies that willing takes place at all, and supposes that something quite different has happened--in short, that the belief in " will" and "end" is an illusion. It does not in quire into the motives of an action, as if these had been present in consciousness previous to the action: but it first divides the action up into a group of phenomena, and then seeks the previous history of this mechanical movement--but not in the terms of feeling, perception, and thought ; from this quarter it can never accept the explanation: perception is precisely the matter of science, which has to be explained--The problem of science is precisely to explain the world, without taking perceptions as the cause: for that would mean
regarding perceptions themselves as the cause of perceptions. The task of science is by no means accomplished.
Thus: either there is no such thing as will,-- the hypothesis of science,--or the will is free. The latter assumption represents the prevailing feeling, of which we cannot rid ourselves, even if the hypo thesis of science were proved.
The popular belief in cause and effect is founded on the principle that free will is tlze cause of every efect: thereby alone do we arrive at the feeling of causation. And thereto belongs also the feeling that every cause is not an effect, but
? ? always only
? ? 'his
cause--if will the cause. "Our acts of will
are not necessary "--this lies in the very concept "will. " The effect necessarily comes after the cause ---that what we feel. It merely hypothesis that even our willing compulsory in every case.
668.
" To will " not "to desire," to strive, to aspire to; distinguishes itself from that through the
'1
THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
141
? passion of commanding. " There no such thing as
willing," but only the willing of something: the aim must not be severed from the' state--as the epistemologists sever it.
" Willing," as they understand no more pos sible than "thinking": a pure invention.
It essential to willing that something should be commanded (but that does not mean that the will carried into effect). . -:.
The general state of tension, by virtue of which ' '
of
? force Seeks to discharge itself,
669.
not " willing. "';-_ so
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"Pain" and "pleasure" are the most absurd means of expressing judgments, which of course does not mean that the judgments which are enunciated in this way must necessarily be absurd. The elimination of all substantiation and logic, a yes or no in the reduction to passionate desire to have or to reject, an imperative abbreviation, the utility of which irrefutable: that pain
and pleasure. Its origin in the central sphere
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THE WILL TO POWER.
of the intellect; its pre-requisite is an infinitely accelerated process of perceiving, ordering, co ordinating, calculating, concluding: pleasure and pain are always final phenomena, they are never " causes. "
As to deciding what provokes pain and pleasure, that is a question which depends upon the degree ofpower: the same thing, when confronted with a small quantity of power, may seem a danger and may suggest the need of speedy defence, and when confronted with the consciousness of greater power, may be a voluptuous stimulus and may be followed by a feeling of pleasure.
All feelings of pleasure and pain presuppose a measuring of collective utility and collective harm
? ? consequently a sphere where there is the willing of an object (of a condition) and the selec
tion of the means thereto. Pleasure and pain are never "original facts. "
The feelings of pleasure and pain are reactions of the will (emotions) in which the intellectual centre fixes the value of certain supervening changes as a collective value, and also as an in troduction of contrary actions.
670.
The belief in " emotions. " --- Emotions are a ' fabrication of the intellect, an invention of causes
which do not exist. All general bodily sensations which we do not understand are interpreted intel lectually--that is to say, a reason is sought why we feel thus or thus among certain people or in certain
fulness:
? ? ter
a n d ver
experiences. Thus something disadvantageous dangerous, and strange taken for granted, as were the cause of our being indisposed; as
matter of fact, gets added to the indisposition, so as to make our condition thinkable. --Mighty rushes of blood to the brain, accompanied by feeling of suffocation, are interpreted as " anger ": the people and things which provoke our anger are means of relieving our physiological con dition. Subsequently, after long habituation, certain processes and general feelings are so regularly correlated that the sight of certain pro cesses provokes that condition of general feeling, and induces vascular engorgements, the ejection of seminal fluid, etc. : we then say that the "emotion
provoked by propinquity. "
judgments already inhere in pleasure and pain
stimuli become differentiated, according as to whether they increase or reduce the feeling of power.
THE \VILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
I43
? ? The belief in willing.
may be the cause of
to believe in miracles.
demands that once we have made the world think
able for ourselves by means of pictures, we should also make the emotions, the desires, the will, etc. , thinhable--that to say, we should deny them and treat them as errors of the intellect.
671.
Free will or no free will ? --There no such thing as " Will ": that only simplified con
To believe that thought mechanical movement The consistency of science
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on the part of the understanding, like "matter. "
All actions must first be prepared and made pos sible mechanically " before they can be willed. Or, in most cases the object" of an action enters the brain only after everything is prepared for its accomplishment. The Object is an inner "stimulus" --nothing more.
672.
The most proximate prelude to an action relates to that action : but further back still there lies a preparatory history which covers a far wider field : the individual action is only a factor in a much more extensive and subsequent fact. The shorter and the longer processes are not reported.
673.
The theory of chance: the soul is a selecting and self-nourishing being, which is persistently extremely clever and creative (this creative power is commonly overlooked! it is taken to be merely passive).
I recognised the active and creative power with in the accidental. ---Accident is in itself nothing more than the clashing of creative impulses.
674.
Among the enormous multiplicity of pheno mena to be observed in an organic being, that part which becomes conscious is a mere means: and the particle of "virtue," "self-abnegation,"
I44
ception
? ? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
I45
and other fanciful inventions, are denied in most thoroughgoing manner by the whole of the re maining phenomena. We would do well to study our organism in all its immorality. . .
The animal functions are, as matter of fact, million times more important than all beautiful states of the soul and heights of consciousness: the latter are an overflow, in so far as they are not needed as instruments in the service of the
animal functions. The whole of conscious life: the spirit together with the soul, the heart, good ness, and virtue; in whose service does work
In the greatest possible perfection of the means (for acquiring nourishment and advancement) serving the fundamental animal functions: above all, the ascent of the line of Life.
That which called " flesh" and "body" of such incalculably greater importance, that the rest
nothing more than small appurtenance. To continue the chain of life so that heconzes ever more powerful--that the task.
But now observe how the heart, the soul, virtue, and spirit together conspire formally to thwart this purpose: as they were the object of every endeavour! The degeneration of lie es sentially determined by the extraordinary falli bility of consciousness, which held at bay least of all by the instincts, and thus commits the gravest and profoundest errors.
Now could any more insane extravagance of vanity be imagined than to measure the value of existence according to the pleasant or unpleasant
feelings of this consciousness? It obviously only VOL. 11. K
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a means: and pleasant or unpleasant feelings are also no more than means.
According to what standard is the objective value measured? According to the quantity of increased and more oiganisedpower alone.
675.
The value of all valuing--My desire would be to see the agent once more identified with the action, after action has been deprived of all mean ing by having been separated in thought from the agent; I should like to see the notion of doing something, the idea of a "purpose," of an " inten tion," of an object, reintroduced into the action, after action has been made insignificant by having been artificially separated from these things.
All " objects," " purposes," " meanings," are only manners of expression and metamorphoses of the one will inherent in all phenomena: of the will to power. To have an object, a purpose, or an in tention, in fact to will generally, is equivalent to
the desire for greater strength, for fuller growth, and for the means thereto in addition.
The most general and fundamental instinct in all action and willing is precisely on that account the one which is least known and is most con cealed; for in practice we always follow its bid ding, for the simple reason that we are in ourselves
its bidding. . . .
All valuations are only the results of, and the
narrow points of view in serving, this one will: valuing in itself is nothing save this,--will to power.
146
? ? ? ? THE \VILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
criticise existence from the standpoint of . . y one of these values is utter nonsense and error. Even supposing that a process of annihilation
follows from such a value, even so this process is in the service of this will.
The valuation of existence itself! But existence
is this valuing itself l--and even when we "no," we still do what we are.
We ought now to perceive the absurdity of this pretence at judging existence; and we ought to try and discover what actually takes place there.
It is symptomatic.
6 76.
Concerning the Origin of our Valuations.
We are able to analyse our body, and by doing so we get the same idea of it as of the stellar system, and the differences between organic and inorganic lapses. Formerly the movements of the stars were explained as the effects of beings con sciously pursuing a purpose: this is no longer
and even in regard to the movements of the body and its changes, the belief has long since been abandoned that they can be explained by an appeal to a consciousness which has a deter mined purpose. By far the greater number of movements have nothing to do with consciousness at all: neither have they anything to do with sensa tion. Sensations and thoughts are extremely rare and insignificant things compared with the in numerable phenomena occurring every second.
On the other hand, we believe that a certain
I47
say
? required,
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'conformity of means to ends rules over the smallest phenomenon, which it is quite beyond 1. .
148
? science to understand: a sort of cautious
deepest
ness, selectiveness, co-ordination, and
process, etc. In short, we are in the presence of an activity to which it would be necessary to ascribe an incalculably higher and more extensive intellect
than the one we are acquainted with. We learn to think less of all that is conscious: we unlearn the habit of making ourselves responsible for ourselves, because, as conscious beings fixing purposes, we are but the smallest part of ourselves.
Of the numerous influences taking effect every second,---for instance, air, electricity,--we feel scarcely anything at all. There might be a number of forces, which, though they never make themselves felt by us, yet influence us continually. Pleasure and pain are very rare and scanty phen omena, compared with the countless stimuli with which a cell or an organ operates upon another cell or organ.
It is the phase of the modesty of consciousness. Finally, we can grasp the conscious ego itself, merely as an instrument in the service of that higher and more extensive intellect: and then we may ask whether all conscious willing, all con scious purposes, all valuations, are not perhaps only means by virtue of which something essentially diferent is attained, from that which consciousness supposes. We mean: it is a question of our
pleasure and pain--but pleasure and pain might be the means whereby we had something to do which lies outside our consciousness.
repairing
?